Prime Minister Narendra Modi too, on Monday, called for greater partnership between India and the UK to, work together to “define the knowledge economy of the 21st century”.

UK recently dealt a double whammy by not just increasing visa fee but also the salary eligibility of workers sought to be deployed.

BENGALURU: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is expected to raise the issue of the difficulties Bengaluru's IT companies are facing due to rising visa costs and regulation during his meeting with UK Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday.

May, even as home minister before, had worked for tight visa regulations that hurt tech firms and students in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi too, on Monday, called for greater partnership between India and the UK to, work together to “define the knowledge economy of the 21st century”. The UK premier is visiting India's technology capital for a day.

Industries Minister RV Deshpande said the UK's decision making the granting of visas more expensive and difficult has created a “disquiet“ in the city.

“What the IT industry needs is visas which enable their engineers to travel to the UK, work on projects for 3-12 months and come back. Just as London bankers, lawyers come to India to do cross-border work, our technology engineers travel to the UK,“ he said. Karnataka would welcome UK engineers to come and work in Bengaluru. “We want UK students to come here and intern with our tech companies,“ he said.

Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar said his organisation has been advocating increased restrictions on the movement of highly skilled Indian workers to the UK does not serve the UK's or India's interests.“The service that these companies provide will help the UK economy. Nasscom and the UK business chambers like Tech UK and CBI have been requesting the government not to put curbs on the movement of highly-skilled workers,“ he said.

“Our view has been that you cannot impose restrictions on trade in technology services and at the same time advocate a freer trade regime with India,“ the Nasscom president said.

Rostow Ravanan, CEO at software firm Mindtree, said the UK has dealt a double whammy by not just increasing visa fee but also the salary eligibility of workers sought to be deployed. “The issue is not a cost for us, but the implication for the UK firm doing business with us. These costs will hurt the UK society which will bear the cost,“ he said.

Another major concern, according to Ravanan, is the constant threat of the visa laws and regulations changing. “I think there is this impression that India is taking away UK jobs.This is highly incorrect because what we address is only the gap in terms of the dearth of knowledge or scale in that country. Technology service is not the same as the manual labour industry where job losses occur,“ he said.